1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to data processing networks including multiple clients and servers such as data storage systems and network file servers. The present invention specifically relates to the sharing of data storage objects between clients and servers using different interfaces, protocols, or operating systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Network data storage is most economically provided by an array of low-cost disk drives integrated with a large semiconductor cache memory. A number of data mover computers are used to interface the cached disk array to the network. The data mover computers perform file locking and file metadata management and mapping of the network files to logical block addresses of storage in the cached disk array, and move data between network clients and storage in the cached disk array. Typically the logical block addresses of storage are subdivided into logical volumes. Each logical volume is mapped to the physical storage using a respective striping and redundancy scheme. The data mover computers typically use the Network File System (NFS) protocol to receive file access commands from clients using the UNIX (Trademark) operating system or the LINUX (Trademark) operating system, and the Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocol to receive file access commands from clients using the MicroSoft (MS) WINDOWS (Trademark) operating system.
More recently there has been a dramatic increase in various ways of networking clients to storage and protocols for client access to storage. These networking options include a Storage Area Network (SAN) providing a dedicated network for clients to access storage devices directly via Fibre-Channel, and Network Attached Storage (NAS) for clients to access storage over a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) based network. In addition to the high-level file-access protocols such as NFS and CIFS, the various networking options may use lower-level protocols such as the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI), the Fibre-Channel protocol, and SCSI over IP. However, most network facilities for data sharing and protection are based on file access protocols, and therefore the use of lower-level protocols in lieu of file access protocols for access to network storage may limit the available options for data sharing and protection.